Broken
by Sunlight through Leaves
Summary: At 11, Iruka makes genin. 1 year younger than most. At 16, he makes chuunin. Much older than most. Take a journey back through Iruka's past to learn explanations for this and many of the other things that make Iruka, Iruka. Irucentric, some Kakairu
1. Chapter 1

**Broken**

Whatdaya know, a new story! This is the one alluded to in Touchstone. I hope people like it!

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Pale fingers traced across the rough skin that arced from just underneath Iruka's left armpit to barely above his hipbone. The chuunin muttered in his sleep, twisting himself deeper into Kakashi's arms and subconsciously moving away from probing touch. "Ne, Iruka?"

Another sleepy grumble met his prompting, but Kakashi continued to call his name until the dark, hazy eyes opened, smiled in his direction until Iruka's brain managed to process that the windows were still dark, which could only mean that the jounin had woken him up before he needed to. "What?" Iruka snapped.

"You told me about this injury," The fingers grazed the edge of the scar again, and Iruka flinched slightly.

"You remember that?" Iruka squirmed around, trying to get his scarred side down into the mattress so that Kakashi would stop staring at it. "I thought you didn't remember anything from when you were in that coma."

"It's been coming back in bits and pieces over the past few days."

Iruka yawned, hugely and blatantly in Kakashi's face, "And your point is?"

"Let me…look… Please?" Kakashi pulled Iruka's chin upward when the other man tried to bury his face back in the pillow and return to sleep.

"You've been looking at it since you woke me up five minutes ago and probably before that! So don't let my sleeping disturb your voyeurism!" Iruka was never very polite when woken up, especially since he had a decided lack of sleep over the past few weeks.

"Iruka." He watched the chuunin stop nestling deeper into the blankets, come fully awake, sit up and turn to face him at the tone in his voice. Kakashi brushed his fingers across his closed left eye, "Let me _look_."

After blinking in confusion several times, Iruka nodded slowly. "You can see chakra with that eye, right? That's why…."

"Yes."

The chuunin sat back, leaning on his elbows, and waited patiently as Kakashi opened his mismatched eye. He watched as Iruka raised his eyes to meet the whirling red of the sharigan and could not hold back a soft smile at the display of strength. _No matter what I am, he will not fear me_. He met those dark eyes, shifted so that he could see the entirety of Iruka's torso and finally lowered his gaze to the old wound.

The sharigan saw chakra like a brilliant haze punctuated by sharp, bright points that marked the location of chakra nodes. While no clan besides the Hyuuga had the ability to directly attack chakra points, enough chakra was concentrated in the nodes to make them stand out against the rest.

The chakra flowing through the right side of Iruka's body, right up until the very edge of the scar, remained normal. But the left side was another matter. The net of chakra nodes remained dark and empty; the general cloud of chakra that should have filled that area was absent, making Iruka look entirely hollow on that side of his body.

With a sharp intake of breath, Kakashi pressed his fingers against one of the black nodes.

OOOOOOOOOOOO

"Settle down!" The chuunin sensei at the front of the room planted one hand on her hip and pointed her finger at the rambunctious youths that she was very nearly free of. Once they'd finally taken their seats – she'd had to grab a couple of them by the scruff of their necks and tossed them into their places – she gathered her papers off the desk. "All of you have graduated from the Academy and will now be assigned to your genin teams. During this phase of your education, you will be trained to be a leader and shinobi of Konoha." Her eyes softened a little, and she scanned the room, allowing her gaze to settle on each genin in turn. "I expect great things from all of you." One of the kids was staring off at a spot just above the door, and she raised an eyebrow. "First lesson for being a leader! Pay ATTENTION! I'm only going to read your team list once."

Iruka shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with the hitae-ate that he now wore around his forehead. The pressure felt overly strange and continued to bother him despite his best attempts. And the other students kept glancing over at him and whispering to each other behind their hands.

Only two short weeks ago, his normal teacher had suggested that he try to test out of the Academy this year, despite only having completed one of the two required years. The fact that he'd actually passed the test – with flying colors – had surprised all of them, and the Sandaime had decided to let him continue on to join a genin team. Iruka'd spent a good hour chatting animatedly with the photo of his parents the rested on his bedside table; even though he wasn't entirely sure that he would succeed as a genin at this age, he knew, without a doubt, that they would be proud of him for making it this far.

When Iruka'd told Mizuki about his early passing, he'd expected his friend to be happy for him, but the other kid had just scowled at him and asked who he was going to be hanging out with now that he'd skipped a whole year group. Iruka'd stepped away from the silver-haired boy feeling like he'd been slapped, and Mizuki had stalked off. Iruka hadn't seen him since.

"Iruka, Kotetsu, Izumo…You're team 12." The sensei's voice broke through his memory, and the two people sitting next to him leaned forward and just stared at him. Though they might not know his name, he was easy to pick out, since he was the only one they didn't know. The one sitting nearest too him had several patches of tape across his face, and his spiky hair almost completely obscured his smaller friend, who was leaning around his shoulder.

"Ano…Hi." Iruka offered. The spiky one still looked unsure, but his friend smiled brightly at him and gave a half wave.

"I'm Izumo." He'd already revamped his hitae-ate into the skull cap, and Iruka had to wonder if it was a family thing, or if he had always worn something of that sort. "And this is Kotetsu." He pointed at the other kid, and Iruka saw – Kotetsu, was it? – roll his eyes.

OOOOOOOOO

Both Izumo and Kotetsu were perched on the top of one of the logs in the training ground. They were dirty, bloody, and utterly proud of themselves. They already worked well together – they had been friends their whole life, after all – and had passed their jounin sensei's test for entering the team. Izumo leaned forward as Iruka moved to the center of the practice ground to face off against their scarred teacher.

"I wonder what he can do." Izumo whispered. "I mean, they had him skip up to our group, so he must be pretty good."

"Yeah." After sneaking a sidelong glance at Kotetsu, Izumo chuckled. His friend was faking indifference, but he was scooting closer to the edge of the stump to get a better view.

The ping of kunai against each other signaled the start of the match, and for a good ten minutes, Iruka held his own against Ibiki. Izumo tried to pick out anything of note from Iruka's fighting style. The other boy might have moved a little faster than them. He might have thrown his weapons with a little bit more accuracy, but other than that, he seemed like any normal genin.

Iruka planted his foot into the ground after passing Ibiki on one attack and used his moment to swing himself around, preparing for the next attack, but Ibiki vanished, moving faster than their eyes could follow, and reappeared directly behind Iruka, already swinging his bladed weapon for a final attack.

_He's going to die._

In the heartbeat before the blade struck, the space around Iruka seemed to distort, as if they were looking at him through a thick haze, and he was gone.

"Nani?" Izumo twisted his head around sharply, just in time to see Iruka reappear, accompanied by the same haze, about 10 feet away from the circle. He held a kunai in his hand that seemed to be constantly shifting with the boundaries of it's shape, and had immediately dropped down into a crouch with his arm cocked back, ready to throw the strange blade in his defense.

"Enough." Ibiki held up his hand. And Iruka froze before slowly shifting back up to a standing position.

Kotetsu pried Izumo's fingers off his arm and surreptitiously rubbed the bruised flesh. "What was that?"

OOOOOOOOOO

Kotetsu leaned over and snagged a piece of sausage out of Izumo's bento as he plopped down beside his old friend and his new teammate. Iruka was chewing in silence, eyes down and focused on the half of his lunch he hadn't finished yet. Ibiki had taken off – apparently to report their success and the permanent forming of team 12 – but had warned them that training would start at 0400 sharp the next morning.

Kotetsu let out an annoyed groan, "Why the heck do we have to start at oh-dark-thirty…."

"Don't worry." Izumo snatched back the remnants of the sausage. "I'll come beat you till you get up."

Iruka swallowed a laugh, met the probing eyes of his teammates, and buried his face back in his lunch, muttering, "Gomen."

"So," Izumo asked around a mouthful of food, "What was that thing that you did?"

The younger boy jabbed at the food in silence, clearly thinking about what he was planning on saying. "It's…ano…it's a bloodline limit. I can't really explain it. I just do it."

"You really don't..." Kotetsu barked out a swear as his hand caught on the thermos when he turned towards Iruka. The bottle tipped forward over the edge of the stump it had been sitting on and started to dump tea towards the ground. Kotetsu grabbed it and fumbled the top back on, still cursing. "Damn, I'll have to go get more. Stupid thermos, shoulda had the top on tightly, and we're a good ten minutes from the village and…"

"Ko." Izumo poked him in the shoulder, but he was still ranting and trying to get the thermos back together. "Ko. Shut up and look."

Iruka had leaned forward slightly, hand extended, and the tea had collected into a shifting sphere in the air above his palm. "Ano," he blushed and scratched at the scar across his nose. "You might want to go get some more anyway. I know it always creeped Mizuki out when I drank anything I'd caught like this."

Both Izumo and Kotetsu stared at him, and he swallowed hard, trying to shake the feeling that these two might have just decided he was certifiably insane, but Izumo suddenly grinned broadly, "Pour it back in; it beats the heck out of the 5 second rule!

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Ever notice how Iruka made genin at 11 (a year younger than most others), but made chuunin at 16? This is a story to explain that, along with other things that make Iruka, Iruka.

Please let me know if it's interesting so far!!


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry, failure for not updating… Hope it's worth the wait

OOOOOOOOOOOO

The Sandaime pressed both fingers to his temples, hoping vaguely that the pressure would keep the headache at bay. The woman across his desk was screaming at a level that was almost high enough to be supersonic, but he could still hear it. And could feel the vibrations rattling the floor around him. He slowly raised his gaze from the mission assignments in front of him and met the wide, innocent gaze that was staring back at him from the other side of the room. He was starting to wonder if his decision on putting the members of team 12 together had not been entirely well-thought out.

"This is outrageous!" The woman seemed to finally put words together in her scattered brain. "I absolutely refuse to pay for this."

"What?!" Kotetsu managed to shout right before Ibiki's hand closed over his mouth. The muffled ranting left little to be imagined about Kotetsu's choice of words. Sarutobi had to wonder where the 11-year-old had learned that vocabulary.

"Excuse me." Iruka offered in a soft voice that forced the lady to stop screaming at them if she wanted to hear him. "The mission was to retrieve the cat, ma'am. And he is back home, safe and sound."

The Sandaime raised an eyebrow, but had to fight down a smile as Izumo's eyes widened, and the young boy looked back and forth rapidly between Iruka and the cat dangling from between the woman's large hands.

The cat was completely drenched. And covered in the sticky, syrup goo that Izumo could produce with his Suiton Mizuame Nabara.

Granted, the front of Kotetsu's outfit was also covered in the same stuff, since he'd been the one to pounce on the stuck cat, but the lady seemed much more concerned with the well-being of her precious feline.

"Iruka." The Sandaime warned in a low voice, and he could have sworn that Iruka forced his expression to be that much more guiltless.

"Safe and sound?!" The poor cat was pushed forwards into Iruka's face and then snatched back, as if the woman thought Iruka might do something worse to it. "You call this..." She spluttered at him, and drew back her free hand, as if to slap him.

"Ma'am," Sarutobi rose to his feet in an effort to stop the inevitable physical violence.

"You approve of this insolence?" She whirled on him.

Sarutobi groaned inwardly, while implementing on of the 500 super-secret techniques learned by all shinobi who have become hokage: ass-kissing. "Please, you'll have to forgive our youth; they are impetuous and sometimes make poor choices. We are, as always honored to have your patronage here, and I promise that your cat will be put back into its rightful state before you return tomorrow morning." The general irritation brought on by uttering such overly flattering statements was easily overridden by the amusement from watching the dark expressions form on the three genin's faces.

OOOOOOOO

"This is bullshit." Kotetsu grumbled, eyeing the dark shape in the corner of the room. He already sported several injuries from previous attempts to control it, before Iruka had pulled him and Izumo into a huddle and concocted this plan.

"Alright, on three." Iruka spread his hands against wall to brace himself. "One." Izumo rose to his feet. "Two." Kotetsu took a step forward, "Three!" The three genin leapt forward, Izumo from the right, Kotetsu from the left, and Iruka over the pool. A resounding crash from the crate's door falling shut echoed through the enclosed room, followed by Izumo's cheers.

"Yatta!" Izumo pumped a hand into the air, trailing after the other two as they lugged the crate towards the edge of the pool.

Both Kotetsu and Iruka traded a serious look before both leaning down to peer into the crate. Kotetsu pushed his sleeves up over his elbows.

"Well?" Izumo asked, inching closer to them.

One of Kotetsu's eyes twitched dangerously. "We can do this."

"Yeah." Iruka nodded. After a few minutes of staring at each other, Iruka pulled the front trap of the crate off, and Kotetsu shoved his arms in.

Spitting, hissing and yowling filled the small room. Kotetsu cursed under his breath as the cat's claws tried to gain purchase on his forearms. Iruka and Izumo struggled for a minute to remove the cat from where it had firmly affixed itself, before Kotetsu just shoved his hand – cat, sleeve and all – into the water.

All hell broke lose.

When it was all said and done, all three genin were thoroughly soaked and a very miffed cat was cleaning off its soggy fur in the corner of the room.

OOOOOOOO

Ibiki leaned against the door, listening to the shrieks, shouts and cries of pain coming from the small bathing room beyond. He chuckled, wondering vaguely if they'd managed to learn the lesson: that sometimes you have to read between the lines on the mission to interpret what the customer wants. Safe and sound does not necessarily mean just uninjured and alive.

OOOOOOOO

Ibiki ducked his head as he leapt back and forth through the overhanging branches. His team had been together for slightly over 4 months and had completed over 60 C and D-rank missions, with a little more success than their first, cat-rescuing assignment.

On the previous morning, he'd stood in front of the Sandaime's desk with a look a somewhat consternated look. "You're serious?"

Sarutobi had nodded slowly, "From what you've told me, and what I've seen your team, they've come along exceptionally well. Their own talents seem to mesh well with each other, and I think it's about time for them to take some more challenging missions. Either high-C or B." He paused, "However, you are still their instructor, and you have the final word."

Ibiki had simply asked for more time. He wanted a chance to evaluate his students under harsher conditions. Through their training, he had pushed them, but not much beyond the missions that they were being assigned.

Which lead to why he was sprinting through the forest now, waiting for his students to try and capture him. He hadn't seen them for over an hour now, and wasn't entirely sure where they were hiding, and why they hadn't tried to attack him at least once by now.

A strange bird-call caught his attention, and he dropped to one of the lower branches, looking up and back for the source. In the second of distraction, something snagged across his ankle. _What the…_ Ibiki shoved his hand down against the branch, shooting himself up upwards and just barely avoiding the bent sapling that whipped through the air where he had just been. He also very narrowly avoided doing a face plant thanks to the strange trip wire that he should have noticed.

He stretched out a hand to catch a passing limb and turned his head sharply when the wood squished up between his fingers. "Che…" He snorted, throwing chakra into his hand to free himself from Izumo's jutsu. But even as he freed his last finger, two large blades crashed upwards through the overgrowth. He kicked one out of the way, but the other went through his vest and shirt and pinned them both to the tree.

As he hit, he was already working to free himself, but shifting ropes of water wrapped up and firmly held him in place. _Good._ He thought, but not good enough. _What will you do if your target escapes?_ He stretched out his chakra to the immediate area and activated a genjutsu that would catch all of them. He grinned evilly as three muffled whumps reached his ears as his team collapsed under the power of his illusion.

The ropes started to loosen, and then shook his head slowly. _And if this was real, you'd all be de…._ A soft splash signaled the release of Iruka's jutsu, the water loosing form and crashing to the ground, but the bounds around his waist and torso remained tight. He looked up at a strange whooshing sound and only had time for one last thought. _Water balloons?_

OOOOOOOOO

Ibiki glared down at the three genin who were sitting cross-legged on the tree limb in front of him. The water balloon had distracted him long enough to drop the jutsu – after all, it wasn't every day that a shinobi got nailed by something so childish, and he certainly wasn't expecting the minor explosion of blue powder that filled the air after impact – and his students had moved far enough away in that moment to no get caught again.

"This powder…" Ibiki drawled out. "Can someone explain why, exactly, you saw the need to use this."

"It was a mark, you know, in case the target escaped." Izumo offered, shaking his head to get the extra lock of hair away from his eye.

"…"

"Yeah, it's almost impossible to get off and it leaves a visible trail on whatever the person touches!" Kotetsu grinned broadly and then swallowed the smile when Ibiki glared at him.

"And how do I go about getting this off?" Ibiki wiped his hand across his face, hoping against all hope that the dye might start coming off his skin. Because, so help him, if he had to go back to the village with blue skin, he was not going to be held responsible for killing his team.

Both Kotetsu and Izumo swiveled their heads around to look at their teammate, who was sitting in between the two of them. Iruka tucked a stray piece of hair behind his ear, and slowly met Ibiki's eyes. "Ano…it just wears off."

Izumo snorted, and then averted his eyes when Ibiki's gaze transferred to him.

"Iruka…" Ibiki drawled the name out. "You planned this?" _Even down to back-up plans in case the target can escape. Interesting._ "We're done for the day. Meet at 0500 tomorrow" He disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

OOOOOOOO

Izumo burst out laughing as soon as Ibiki vanished. "H-how long does it take for that stuff to come off?"

The corners of Iruka's lips hooked upwards in a devilish grin, "'Bout two weeks."

OOOOOOOO

god, I fucking hate this chapter...next one will be better

oh, and sorry it's so short


	3. Chapter 3

Third chapter; hope you like

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"This. Sucks." Kotetsu pointed out from where he was leaning against one of the gate uprights. Iruka lay sprawled across the guard desk on this stomach, idly chasing balls of water across the worn surface. "Why'd we show up early?"

"'Cause Ibiki-sensei'll work us three times as hard if we showed up after him. And anyway…" Iruka was cut off by a muted snore emitting from Izumo's mostly blocked mouth. The genin was slumped on Kotetsu's shoulder, his face buried in the crook of his friend's neck. "…We can take a short nap before he gets here."

Kotetsu groaned loudly, "It's not even light yet!"

"Ne, Ko…" Izumo half-heartedly poked his friend in the side. "You're noisy."

"Yeah, well, none of you should be sleeping on the day of a mission." Ibiki landed on the ground between them and glared around at his three genin.

"Mission?" Izumo's head jerked up. "Really? What mission?"

Ibiki handed the assignment scroll over to them, "It's a B-rank; the details are included here. You have an hour to get your stuff together and we meet back here."

OOOOOOOOOOO

Iruka groaned and dug his shoulder deeper into Kotetsu's armpit. "You…weigh… a…ton."

"Well, it's not _my _fault…" Kotetsu rolled his eyes over at the other person supporting his weight as they limped back through the village gates. Ibiki'd deserted them the minute they arrived in the clearing, heading to turn in his report, or so he told them. Iruka was fairly certain that he just didn't want to be seen returning with his 'interesting' group of genin, and he'd been snickering when he left.

"I'm sorry that my jutsu didn't reach as far as you thought it would." Izumo poked the side of his face. "But if you could react as fast as you should, you wouldn't of fallen over, ne?"

Kotetsu glared at him. Iruka started laughing, and Kotetsu whipped around to face him. "What?!"

"The look on your face was amazing." Iruka gasped out over Izumo's snorts of laughter, and Kotetsu joined in after a moment.

"I-Iruka?" The curious voice queried from behind him, and Iruka swiveled around under Kotetsu's armpit to look towards it.

"Mizuki?" Iruka paused, waiting for Kotetsu to balance himself on Izumo's shoulder before extricating himself. "Hey."

"Why," Mizuki cocked his head to one side, "Are you blue?"

OOOOOOOOOOO

Ibiki knocked once before entering the mission office to turn in his report. The Sandaime looked up from behind his hat, "Ibiki-san. The mission was successful?'

"Yes." Ibiki handed over the paperwork.

"Team giving you any problems?" The Sandaime smiled knowingly around his pipe.

"Not anymore."

OOOOOOOO

"You have to make a choice." Ibiki stood in the front of the room, his arms folded across his chest. "I have recommended that you be entered into the chuunin exam this year." He didn't quite miss the hi-five that passed between Kotetsu and Izumo. "This is not the time to be celebrating, Kotetsu-kun, Izumo-kun. I said that I have recommended you for the exam; that does not mean that you have been entered. The three of you need to make a decision. For this exam, you have to enter as a team; if one of you does not feel ready to enter, none of you will."

"Well, duh, Ibiki-sensei, of course we're going to…"

"This is NOT a joke." Ibiki leaned forward into Kotetsu's personal space. "People die in this exam, and even though you've completed numerous missions now, you still have less than a year of experience. You need to decide if you're ready or not."

The three genin all found something very interesting to stare at on the floor, silence falling over the entire room. Izumo opened his mouth a couple of times, as if he was going to say something, but always closed it without speaking.

Finally, Iruka broke the oppressive silence, "You think we're ready." Both Kotetsu and Izumo looked at him. "You must think we're ready or you never would've put our names in. You wouldn't have given us the chance to make the wrong decision. So it's just down to whether we believe in ourselves."

"I'll need your decision by this afternoon." Ibiki told them, ignoring what Iruka had just said. He stepped out of the somber classroom, and then let out an irritated snort. "That boy is just too smart for his own good."

OOOOOOOOO

"What do we want to do?" Izumo had hopped up onto the desk between Iruka and Kotetsu and looked back and forth between his two teammates, searching for an answer.

"Do you guys know anything about the test?" Iruka wondered.

"Nah, it's all really hush, hush." Kotetsu shrugged, "Guess they don't want us to be able to prepare for it."

"Well, Ibiki-sensei seems to think that we're ready. And he at least has some experience with it." Iruka scratched thoughtfully at the bridge of his nose. "I think we should do it. But…" He continued before Izumo could completely open his mouth, "I think we should all decide and if any of us aren't ready for it, we shouldn't do it." He looked up at his older teammates, wondering when and why exactly he had become the one in charge. "What do you think?"

Izumo and Kotetsu looked at each other for a long moment, and surprisingly it was Izumo who answered first. "I'm ready." He grinned down at Iruka.

Kotetsu grinned broadly, "I think we should go kick some ass." His best friend returned the wide smile, and then turned to Iruka.

"What about you, Ru-kun."

Iruka rolled his eyes, also wondering when _that _had become his name, though he figured he shouldn't be too surprised – he couldn't think of any time when he'd heard Izumo call anyone by their full name. The other two leaned in towards him with expectant looks, so he pretended to think about it, lacing his fingers together, before finally looking up at them and pulling a face. "Well, duh."

OOOOOOOOOO

The first test for the chuunin exam went relatively easy for them. Their group was let into one of the larger training areas that surrounded the Mist Village, a dense, dark jungle of plants, trees and who-knew-what-else. They were given a sealed scroll and informed that they needed to retrieve the secondary scroll from one of the other teams – only luck would tell if they managed to retrieve the other scroll, as opposed to the match to theirs.

They'd been lucky. Iruka'd led them high into the trees to get a better surveillance on the location of the other teams, and they'd selected a team of Sand shinobi who looked to be a year or two older than them, but also looked decidedly like they didn't want to be there. The enemy team spent a good ten minutes arguing with each other on what they should do, which allowed their team to get into position.

Iruka'd stumbled forward through the leaves, looking for all the world like a bumbling idiot and clutching their scroll tightly against his chest. "Ah..ano..I…" He stammered, frozen to the spot, as the three sand shinobi turned towards him, eyes glinting wickedly. Iruka took a hesitant step back and fled blindly into the underbrush.

True to form, the enemy team wasted no time in racing after him. Iruka kept his eyes down, not worrying about the people chasing him; he had a good enough of a head start that they wouldn't catch without an act of god.

The dirt in front of him changed texture and he immediately focused his chakra downward to keep from being caught in Izumo's technique.

The sand shinobi were not so lucky, and Iruka choked back laughter as the leading one's feet stopped, his upper body did not, and he fell face-first into the sticky goop. The girl behind him must have noticed the change in the ground and jumped, hoping to avoid it, but her foot tangled in her teammate's twisted legs, and she collapsed on top of him. Their third member slid into them, without any attempt to avoid them, and while they were all struggling to extricate themselves, Iruka bound them together with several water ropes before skating his way back to stop in front of them. "Hello!" Iruka said brightly.

They glared at him with only slightly masked killing intent.

Iruka tilted his head to one side, "Where's your scroll?"

"Screw you." Their leader, or whatever passed for that on their team, snapped at him and then gagged in surprise as an enormously over-sized kunai was shoved up under his throat.

Kotetsu grinned evilly at him from the other side of the blade, "Let's try this again, where's the scroll?"

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Only three teams made it through the first test – one sand, one mist, and one leaf – and Iruka, Kotetsu and Izumo's team was by far the youngest there. The next closest team looked to be about four years older; they towered over the three Konoha genin, and Izumo edged his way to stand between his two friends. "What now?" He whispered.

"Follow me." A mountain of a scarred shinobi appeared in front of them before turning towards the open archway at the end of the hall. He turned back. "Move!" The assorted genin scrambled after him.

OOOOOOOOOO

Kotetsu punched his hand into the air, ignoring the mumbling and scattered clapping coming from the surrounding stands. The sand shinobi he'd just defeated was being carried off on a stretcher, and the observers looked rather miffed about a Konoha victory.

"Up next," The chuunin who was running the matches flipped through some sheets on his clipboard, "Umino Iruka vs Hisori Ryu."

Iruka dropped lightly to the ground and walked to the center of the stadium to meet his opponent. Hisori Ryu was barely taller than him, but he certainly looked a fair bit older. Dark hair hung down into his eyes, and he glared out from underneath at Iruka, who stopped, surprised by the sheer malice in the other's eyes.

The referee dropped his hand, signaling the start of the match. Iruka and his opponent just stared at each other. The mist shinobi shoved his hands deep into his pockets and remained rooted to the spot, even when Iruka shifted his weight in preparation for an attack. Iruka never liked initiating attacks – he always wanted to have some idea of his opponent's skills before revealing any of his own – but this one wasn't moving; he wasn't even building chakra for an attack. It was…disturbing.

The ground in front of him exploded without warning; gold light splitting and arcing through the air, striking the ground in several places before it reached him. Iruka gasped, formed two quick seals, and vanished a split second before the attack hit the spot where he'd been standing.

Iruka reappeared on the wall of the stadium, above and behind Ryu, who twisted around once the smoke had cleared and it became evident that Iruka's smoldering body was not among the rubble. A strange look briefly crossed Ryu's face when he spotted the other genin, a mix of surprise and irritation. He'd clearly expected the first attack to kill him.

Still panting from the effort needed to activate his bloodline limit without any chance to prepare, Iruka dropped into a crouch, one knee on the wall, and rested his arms on his thighs, studying his opponent. There had been no sign that Ryu was preparing for an attack, and one of that magnitude must have required some preparation unless the other genin had a superhuman chakra reserve.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when another bolt crashed down, and he narrowly managed to avoid it. The only thing he could be thankful for was the fact that it struck the ground several times before reaching him – it gave him fair warning and allowed him to get out of the way.

Three more strikes later, and Ryu was growling in anger. "You're one lucky son-of-a-bitch." He snarled. "You should have been dead after the first strike."

Iruka offered a false smile, glad that the other genin felt the need to talk, it gave him a chance to evaluate the situation. And maybe, just maybe he might get an answer about something that had been bothering him. "I probably would be if you didn't hit the ground every time."

Very few shinobi could resist the urge to brag about their jutsus, and Ryu was no different. "It makes the chakra turbulent and builds strength to the attack. Otherwise it would take me too long to build up a lethal attack. Most people aren't fast enough to escape, so it doesn't really matter if they see it coming." He straightened. "But that teleportation jutsu you're using, that must take a lot of chakra, must take a fair amount of time to build, so…"

Iruka was ready for the attack that came, vanishing from the spot to appear closer to Ryu this time, who attacked as soon as he saw were Iruka'd landed. The light struck the ground several more times than the previous ones – which made sense, the mist genin had had less time to build his chakra.

He'd never had another shinobi guess at his bloodline limit, and he was incredibly glad that Ryu had underestimated it so badly. He disappeared and hit the ground just long enough for Ryu to see him and start to turn towards him. Four more jumps placed him directly in front of Ryu, crouched at his feet. The mist genin gaped down at him and particularly at the water taking shape in Iruka's hand.

After watching the same jutsu this many times, Iruka'd noticed that Ryu's left pocket shifted right before he released his attack. The genin must have been forming a single-handed seal. Iruka leapt up, tackling Ryu, and wrapped a watery rope around Ryu's left wrist, pulling his hand out and away from his body. As they hit the ground, the water flowed over Ryu's fingers, forcing them apart and keeping him from forming a seal. Iruka pressed the long, water-formed blade against the mist shinobi's neck.

"End match!" The chuunin shouted behind them.

"WHAT?!" Ryu hollered at him, struggling against the water holding his hand down. "I can still fight!"

"That's true, but Umino-kun could easily have slit your throat on the way down. If this was a real fight, you would be dead. The fight is over. Please let him up."

Iruka released the jutsu and stood up, extending his hand to Ryu, who brushed it away and shoved past him. The chuunin examiner beckoned Iruka over, extending the clipboard for him to sign, designating that he had, in fact competed in the match.

OOOOOOO

Izumo applauded loudly, ignoring the fact that no one else in the audience seemed pleased by the turn of events, and grinned broadly when he saw Iruka's lips twitch up into a slight smile as he turned away from his defeated opponent. Kotetsu leaned over his shoulder and yelled a couple of cheers towards the stadium grounds before joining Izumo in clapping.

Ryu pressed his right hand to his left as he slunk around behind the moderator for the matches. It looked like he was massaging the injury he'd sustained from Iruka's attack, and after a minute, he put his hands back in his pockets. Izumo rolled his eyes. "Sore looser, that guy." The gold arc of light took all of them by surprise; it raced straight towards Iruka without striking the ground, and Izumo vaguely saw Ibiki moving to intercept it.

"Ru!!" The scream tore its way from Izumo's throat. In the stadium grounds below, Iruka had just enough time to turn around before the attack crashed into him, lifting him off his feet and flinging him into the wall. Iruka's limp body slid to the ground, leaving a streak of blood down the rough stone.

Kotetsu was over the rail before Izumo's brain could even kick in enough to process what had happened, but Ibiki had already arrived at Iruka's side. As they reached their friend's body, they could hear Ibiki calling out Iruka's name.

After several heart-rending moments, Iruka coughed and raised his head from the pool of blood that was spreading around him.

"Ru!" Izumo stumbled forward.

" 'm okay." Iruka gasped out, tried to push himself off the floor, and collapsed again. The ruin of his left side continued to ooze blood into the dirt floor of the arena. He choked down a cry, "….it hurts…"

Ibiki put a solid hand on his shoulder and forced Iruka back to the ground. "Don't move." The scarred man turned back, looking for the medical team that seemed to be taking forever to get there. Izumo and Kotetsu were both on their knees next to Iruka's other side. Izumo had tears streaming down his face and both hands were clasped over his mouth. He felt like he was either going to start screaming or throw up and couldn't seem to decide between the two. Iruka was…. Iruka was…

OOOOOOOOOOOO

love? hate? Lemme know

Sunlight through Leaves


	4. Chapter 4

Holy crap! It's a new chapter!!! Sorry, sorry, sorry for the long wait. I had massive writer's block (new where I wanted it to go, but not how to write it).

OOOOOOOOOOO

Consciousness returned along with the pain, and Iruka became aware of one system after another. In the end, he managed to open his eyes, but saw only darkness. His hand twitched, but he couldn't seem to find the strength to raise it to his face to find out why he couldn't see.

A hand closed over his, and he clung to it desperately, trying to speak, but the tube down his throat kept him from making anything other than gagging sounds.

"It's okay," A woman's voice said, though it seemed to come from horribly far away. "You're on a respirator; don't try to talk." He heard her rummaging around near his bed. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be on it for a little while longer. The attack damaged your left lung, and we can't risk it; you might stop breathing." He barely caught the soft mutter that followed, "_Again_."

He finally lifted his hand off the blankets enough to form a questioning sign; he could only hope that she knew the same battlefield sign language that they learned in Konoha. The room was deadly silent for too long, and Iruka worried that she'd left, but kept forming the signs in hopes that she'd notice.

She reached out and stilled his hand, "It's okay; I understand. Your eyes are bandaged. The attack was bright enough to dazzle your eyes, and even though we have the lights quite low in here, it's likely to be painful for you." She squeezed his hand, "Try to get some rest. I'll be back in later to take the tube out."

He listened to the retreating footsteps, wondering why it was so much harder to sense her chakra.

OOOOOOOO

"Izu…" Kotetsu shook his friend's shoulder. Izumo was curled across two of the seats in the waiting room, his face buried in the crook of his arm. "The doctors are here." Ibiki was already on his feet and going to meet them.

"What're they saying?" Ibiki'd stopped them far enough away the Kotetsu and Izumo couldn't quite hear them. They watched their teacher's shoulders relax, and he turned back towards them.

"They say that it looks good; he woke up a few minutes ago, but they won't be able to take him off the respirator for a little while longer." Ibiki rubbed his hand back over his skullcap and collapsed down onto the chair across from Kotetsu.

Izumo curled back up, resting his head on Kotetsu's leg as the other genin sat down next to him. Kotetsu wound his fingers in the dark hair and glared angrily at the floor. He'd managed to only throw one good punch at Ryu before the rest of the jounin had arrived to restrain the mist genin. One of the jounin had ripped him off the other boy's frame, and Kotetsu clearly wanted the chance to beat the living daylights out of the genin.

OOOOOOOO

"Alright." The disembodied voice was accompanied by a strong grip around his chin. "On three, I'm going to pull; I want you to breath out as hard as you can, okay?"

Iruka nodded shallowly, trying not to move his head too much to keep from getting disoriented by the darkness he was enveloped in.

"One, two, three." Iruka gagged as the stiff tube was pulled out of his throat and was grateful when strong hands pulled him into a sitting position and steady his head as he coughed. He was incredibly grateful that he didn't hurl – without his sight he probably would have missed any bucket that they might have been holding out.

His hands closed around a paper cup as it was pressed against his palm.

"It's water. It should ease your throat a little bit."

Iruka took a hesitant sip, coughing slightly as he swallowed. "T-thank you." He lifted a hand to touch the cheesecloth that covered the upper half of his face.

"Sorry, not quite yet. We'll take the bandages off your eyes tonight when it's a little darker out."

"Okay." Iruka tried hard not to clench the paper cup as he drew in a deep breath and prepared to ask the toughest question. "H….how…how bad is it?"

"We're not sure." The man's voice seemed to echo weirdly in the tiled hospital room. "It's possible that there's nothing wrong, but the wound was very deep, and the damage was bad enough that it might have severed your chakra network. But we won't know if that's the case unless you can try some jutsu's to see whether or not you can still use your chakra to the full extent."

"So, why don't I….?" Iruka started before he was interrupted.

"Not yet. We want to make sure that you're absolutely stable before you try something like that." The bed shifted, and he had to assume that the doctor had gotten up. "I'm going to go get your teammates and sensei."

Iruka heard the door slide shut, and he gripped the cup tighter, feeling the water slosh around in it. He spread his right hand above it and poured chakra down into his palm, reaching for the water and attempting to control it.

Forming weapons and ropes of water was second nature to him now, and he barely needed to concentrate on it or provide any more than a trickle of chakra to maintain the shape. But now…

The water refused to respond. Iruka shook his head in irritation and pushed more chakra into his hand before screaming at the sudden, searing pain in his side. The cup crashed to the ground, water splashing out all over the bed and floor.

Iruka folded over, grasping his side and fighting down tears of pain. _No_. It was the simplest part of his bloodline limit, and if he couldn't even manage that…

"Ru?!" Izumo's voice came from the general vicinity of the door. "Ru, you okay?"

The panic in the other boy's voice pulled him out of his self-pity, and he managed a weak smile the general direction of Izumo's voice. "Don't worry, Izu. I'm okay. Just sat up to quickly and dropped the glass."

"Oh. Good." Iruka felt Izumo and then Kotetsu sit on the bed, but identifying their chakra signatures was almost impossible. He could just barely make out a bright spark that marked each of them, and it seemed horribly blurry.

OOOOOOOO

Iruka fell to the ground with an agonized cry, barely getting one arm out to keep from sprawling face first into the cold flooring. The other arm was wrapped around his stomach, trying to compress the bandages and hold in the pain.

The doctor and two nurses that had been supervising turned and muttered to each other. Iruka could only pick out one phrase. "…worse than we feared…."

He collapsed, pressing his face into the tile and choking back sobs as the pain washed over him.

OOOOOOOO

"Iruka!" Kotetsu sprang to his feet as Iruka limped into the waiting room with one of the nurse's hands around his shoulders. "How'd it go?"

The nurse glanced down at him as Iruka shrugged her hand off of him, nodded and walked away. "Not so well." He caught the expressions on his teammates' faces, and he continued quickly "But they're very hopeful that I'll be able to recover over the next few months."

"Excellent!" Izumo clapped his hands together. "Just means we'll all have to do more training."

"Speaking of that." Ibiki stepped into the group. "Now that the hospital has released Iruka, we're heading home. Kotetsu, Izumo, go get our gear from the hostel. We'll meet you at the gate."

"Yes, Ibiki-sensei." Kotetsu nodded as Izumo responded.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Ibiki put a hand between Iruka's shoulder blades and pushed him towards the door. "You shouldn't lie to your teammates."

Iruka blinked as they stepped out into the bright sunshine, his eyes were still sensitive from the attack, and he found that he couldn't open them completely in the light. "I don't want them to worry."

"Even if you can hide it now, they will find out eventually." Ibiki changed his grip, grabbing Iruka's arm on his good side and pulling him to a halt. "Iruka, I understand what you're trying to do. I understand that you think it's what's best for the team. But when they find out. Not if, when...."

He averted his gaze, not wanting to meet the intensity of Ibiki's eyes. He knew all of that, but he'd seen both Kotetsu and Izumo's faces fall when he'd first told him how he was doing, and he just couldn't face it.

OOOOOOOOO

"Ah, good, you're all here." The Sandaime laced his fingers together and stared down at the members of team 13. "I understand that you all just returned from Mist, but we need to make some immediate changes to the team."

"Changes?" Izumo whispered towards his teammates. Kotetsu shrugged back at him.

"Iruka-kun, we're transferring you to a different team that just graduated from the academy."

"WHAT?!" Both Kotetsu and Izumo shouted. "You can't be serious!" Izumo continued over his friend's spluttering protests. "Why on earth would you split us up?"

"Iruka-kun has a long way to go before he will be able to function as a normal genin, and at this point, he will only serve to hold you back."

"Hold us back?" Kotetsu shook his head vehemently. "He's a member of our team. We're going to help him recover. Our team is one of the best!"

"Was." The Sandaime said sharply. "Your team was one of the best. As it stands right now, you've almost completely lost one of your members. You're one of the worst teams we have right now. This can be solved by simply reorganizing."

Both Kotetsu and Izumo exploded, arguing loudly and gesturing wildly. Ibiki remained behind the three genin, his arms folded over his broad chest.

"Enough." Iruka finally snapped, and the Sandaime noticed Ibiki's eyes dropping to the back of his student's head. "Ko, Izu. That's enough."

"But!" Izumo protested.

"No," Iruka shook his head. "He's right. All I'm going to do is hold you back. This is the best solution for everyone."

His teammates voices died in their throats. Iruka had been the leader of their team for long enough, that Kotetsu and Izumo were willing to follow his lead, even if they didn't like it.

"But, when he gets better," Izumo looked between the hokage, his teacher and his teammate. "He can come back, right?"

"If he gets better." The hokage stressed the conditional.

"What do you mean, 'if?'" Kotetsu caught it.

Iruka forced a smile. "There's always an 'if,' right?" Kotetsu studied him, and Iruka had to wonder if he could see the dishonesty lurking just behind his eyes. "How about we cross that bridge when we come to it?" He looked to the hokage, understanding that the conversation had been over before it started – this was an informative meeting as nothing he or the others said would affect the decision. When he saw the sad dismissal in the man's face, he turned and left the room with Kotetsu and Izumo hard on his heels.

"Ru, you're not really…I mean, you can't really…"

"It's just how it is, Izu."

"But…"

Iruka hated the strangled look plastered across Izumo's face. Kotetsu was fairing a bit better, but most certainly did not look happy. "Hey, come on now. It's not like I'm vanishing off the face of the earth! We'll still see each other."

Both genin opened their mouths to say something, but Ibiki swooped out of the office, snarling, "We've got a mission. We're going."

Neither boy was brave enough to argue with the scarred special jounin.

Iruka had never been more grateful for Ibiki's commanding presence. The moment the trio disappeared from view, Iruka fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, burying his face in his knees. It had taken every ounce of willpower to smile at his friends and tell them that he would rejoin them when he recovered.

All the tests suggested that he was never going to recover. Most of the doctors believed that he would no longer be able to be a shinobi. The hokage was giving him a chance to relearn how to fight with his new handicap, but neither he nor Ibiki expected the outcome to be positive.

"Hey, I heard you're with us!" A voice interrupted his wallowing in self-pity.

"Mizuki?" Iruka's head came up to focus on the person who'd been his friend when he was still in the Academy.

Compassion bloomed across Mizuki's face. "What happened?"

Iruka was shaken, alone and falling apart. He told Mizuki everything.

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Enjoy? Partially worth the wait? (obviously not the whole wait, because that was too extraordinarily long, but at least somewhat worth it?)


	5. Chapter 5

The mission was supposed to be simple. His team hadn't been assigned anything over a D-rank since he'd been added, and he'd spent every waking moment outside of their jobs trying to build his abilities back.

He thought he'd been making progress.

But he was running at full speed, chasing his teammates, and they were drawing farther away from him with every leap. As he landed on a branch, he drove chakra downward to his feet to propel himself forward.

Pain ricocheted instantly up his legs and across his torso, driving him to his knees and then to his side as he was unable to halt his forward momentum and rolled off the edge of the limb.

A hand snapped around his wrist, almost yanking his arm out of its socket, and the ache brought him abruptly back to consciousness.

"You really can't do anything now, can you?"

As his new teacher was busy hauling him back on to the branch, he couldn't be absolutely sure he'd actually heard Mizuki say that.

The sharp stabs along his side had barely faded, but he struggled to get his feet under him making it to an almost standing position before the pain forced him back to his knees.

He clapped a hand over his mouth, and blood spurted between his fingers as he coughed convulsively, trying to ease the burning sensation in his chest.

OOOOOOOOO

"What did I do?" Iruka hunched on the end of the examination table and tried to suppress the niggling fear climbing up his spine at the unreadable expression on the medical nin's face.

"You didn't _do _anything." He was shaking his head as he tilted Iruka's head back and peered into his eyes. "The injuries to your chakra network are not healing."

"Healing? The other doctors said I'd never recover." He couldn't understand how they could possibly be worse.

"Well, no, you'll never again be able to use your damaged chakra network. The wounds were deep enough to sever sections of your chakra network. We expected the raw edges to begin scabbing over, not unlike an amputated limb, but there does not appear to be any healing. And, unfortunately, we cannot explain it at this time."

"You are using too much chakra."

"Hokage-sama." The doctor backed out of the way, letting the Sandaime approach his patient.

"Channeling chakra to a given extremity is easy. If the damage sustained to your network was limited to your arm, you should be able to relearn your techniques without sending chakra through the damaged lines."

"But…it's not limited to that." Iruka pulled his arms tight around his chest.

"No. The central network is a tangled mess. The paths on the left side of your body do not all lead to your left arm. So you cannot easily separate which lines you push your chakra down. Furthermore, the expansion of chakra in your central network is always your entire chakra. It's narrowed down and broken out as it is parsed to the extremities."

"What does it mean?"

"You're tearing yourself apart from the inside out. Every time you expand your chakra from your center, it's halted at the severed lines, but you burn the ends of your damaged network. Basically, you're picking off the scabs." The Hokage removed his hat and passed it to the doctor.

"Then…what do we do?"

"We're going to have to seal the majority of your chakra. It's the only way to allow your network to heal and keep you from killing yourself."

"But once it's healed, I can go back, right? To using all my chakra?" Iruka couldn't quite keep the desperate hope from his voice. The hokage was giving him a chance to continue to be a shinobi, but with barely any chakra, he didn't think he could manage it.

"As I've said before, you'll never have your kekkai-genkai back, not without the ability to use your chakra network in your left arm." He rested a hand on the back of Iruka's head. "But I am hopeful that you will be able to return to your normal levels. We need to do this as soon as possible, Iruka. Using chakra is a natural reaction, and we don't want you to hurt yourself even more."

"No choice?"

The Hokage shook his head sadly.

Iruka swallowed hard. It was times like this that he realized just how much he missed his parents. The cold, sterile hospital room was scary on a good day, but today…it was terrifying. Faced with an unknown medical-ninjutsu procedure, he wished he had someone here to tell him that it was all going to be okay.

Not that it would.

But he would still have liked the platitude.

Aging fingers traced characters in flaming light across his chest. Three rings rested one inside of the other directly above his heart, with radiating lines spreading out from the center point. The Hokage gathered a handful of chakra and planted it against the character drawn at the direct center of the seal.

The pain was blinding, almost worse than that he'd suffered in the original injury, and his back arched up off the table as he ground his teeth together, resolutely willing himself not to cry out.

In seconds it was over. The seal had collapsed to a small variation on a circumpunct – a narrow, double-lined circle with three spots forming a triangle in the direct center – and the dark lines were already beginning to fade. He lay panting on the table, his shaking hand gingerly touching the cooling skin.

The Sandaime stayed long enough to ensure that he was alive and then left. He understood – the Hokage was a busy man, and Iruka counted himself lucky that he'd took the time to perform the seal himself.

The doctor helped him to sit up, and he grabbed hold of the man's forearm when the room swum and his muscles refused to respond as quickly as he was used to.

Standing turned out to be even more of a problem. Walking was downright impossible.

It wasn't as if he used all his chakra all the time. That would be exhausting and downright stupid. But all shinobi maintained a low-level of chakra. It was a subconscious reaction, akin to always stepping off with your right foot when you started walking. The amount of chakra was so small that it didn't seem like it should make such a difference.

But it did.

Iruka stumbled several times before managing to get his feet underneath him and slowly began to adjust to the massive change.

If re-learning how to walk was this hard, he didn't even want to think about how he was going to fight.

OOOOOOOOO

Harsh gasping broke the early morning air as Iruka clawed his way into a seated position using the wooden practice column and cradled his hands around his ankle. He rubbed his arm across his face to dash away the tears of pain.

"Iruka?"

"Mizuki." Iruka scrubbed harder at his eyes, and tried to struggle to his feet.

"You okay?" The swelling ankle under Iruka's hands was all too evident. "We really should get you to the hospital."

"No! They'll put me on sick leave. They'll take away my status as a shinobi." Iruka choked. "I can barely even do basic taijutsu."

"You've only been at it for a couple of days, right?" Mizuki leaned down and held out a hand. "We've got a mission. C'mon, the others'll be suspicious if you don't show up."

"I…can't…"

"Don't worry. I'll take care of you."

OOOOOOOOO

Even though he trained every day to the point where he could barely stand, Iruka was relegated to the back of the group, with Mizuki standing between him and the enemy, even after their sensei and the Hokage had allowed them to return to higher than D-rank missions.

The team split up at the gate following a particularly strenuous mission, and Iruka and Mizuki walked back in silence, Iruka gnawing at his bottom lip.

"I could have handled that shinobi." Iruka muttered.

"Please, Iruka, you barely have any more chakra than the average person on the street." Mizuki swept his arms wide to indicate the rest of the populace. "You know you couldn't have handled him, and you probably would have been injured."

Iruka's body slumped, and Mizuki tossed an arm around the other genin's shoulders. "I just don't want you to get hurt, alright?"

"Yeah…"

OOOOOOOO

"Hey, Ru!" Izumo waved frantically from the other end of the street. "We were just looking for you!"

"Izu, Ko, hey." Iruka took a step back. Kotetsu and Izumo weren't particularly talented at sensing chakra, but considering the fact that he hadn't seen them since before the sealing and how far he'd fallen, they were still likely to notice.

"How are you? We haven't seen you in forever."

Iruka shrugged. "I'm okay."

"Our new teammate isn't half as good as you, but we're doing fine." Kotetsu grinned at him. "Ibiki-sensei doesn't like him."

"Duh, Ko, Ibiki-sensei doesn't like anyone."

"He liked Iruka!"

"It was good to see you guys." Iruka may have left the team several months before, but he still remembered how to deal with the inseparable pair. Kotetsu and Izumo could argue for hours if left to their own devices. It had degraded into throwing things, including Iruka's belongings, in many cases. He'd learned early to head them off at the pass.

"What?"

"You're leaving, Ru?"

"But we wanted to ask you something."

"Yeah, the new guy can't make our next mission because of some family matter, and we need a third. Can you come?" Izumo's eyes were pleading.

Iruka crossed an arm over his chest and held tight to his other arm. "You know, I'd like to, but I…I can't. We're just overloaded with missions and…and..."

"Ru?" The look creeping across Kotetsu's face suggested that he was getting a inkling that Iruka wasn't telling them the whole truth.

"Damn. Guess we'll just wind up with some random person." Izumo frowned. "We should hang out. You've got to have some free time, and…" He trailed off.

Iruka jumped as a hand landed on his shoulder. "Mizuki."

"Sensei's looking for us. He's running a training session today."

The other genin didn't so much push him as guide him in the opposite direction. He didn't glance back, but he could tell that Kotetsu and Izumo were watching him leave.

OOOOOOO

Mizuki was by his side during all of the missions, and four more chuunin exams before he finally passed. When he did, Kotetsu and Izumo threw him a huge party, but he didn't remember much of it since Mizuki had nudged him at the end of the night and said, "Congrats. Good thing I was there during the preliminaries and the guy you fought at the end was such a push-over."

The next morning, he'd stood outside the Hokage's office for close to five hours, shinobi card in hand. He came a hairs-breadth away from turning it in and resigning.

Only his everlasting, burning desire to never give up, kept him from following through.

On his way out, Mizuki appeared at the base of the stairs with a plan to try out for a teaching position. His rationale was that Iruka hadn't seen real combat in several years, and that teaching at the Academy would greatly reduce the number of missions he'd have to go on.

"You'd be a lot safer." He'd said. "But it'll be hard for you to pass the exam."

Iruka had opened his mouth to argue, but he couldn't think of anything to say – Mizuki was right, after all.

OOOOOOOOO

Sorry for the wait, hope you enjoy the new chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

His leg muscles screamed as he leapt backwards, barely avoiding a line of explosive tags that were not particularly well hidden. Damn. He should have seen them before now.

In the seconds before he landed, a spray of kunai peppered the area. Still in mid-jump, there was nothing he could do to change his trajectory. A clone wearing his face and body, but formed with something that was decidedly not his chakra appeared above him and practically threw him to the ground before disappearing in a cloud as several kunai found their mark.

He landed awkwardly and slid downhill across the loose soil into the dubious cover of a rotting stump. His haphazard fall was arrested by a strong hand on the collar of his vest, and Mizuki hauled him back into deeper cover.

Iruka panted, trying to get oxygen to his starved muscles, but in the end settled for signing, 'Clone?' when his lungs refused to work.

He wasn't complaining about the last minute rescue - he would have been unable to avoid serious injury without it - but rather confused as to why Mizuki had bothered to waste the extra chakra for a henge.

Mizuki risked a quick glance over the massive roots. "You've gotta figure they're watching this. I mean, half the challenges seem to be specifically set up to bring out certain basic skills that you'd need to be able to teach. It's a demonstration, really."

Iruka bit his lip. Mizuki was covering for him. A clone was one of those 'basic skills' that Iruka still hadn't been able to relearn. So was the henge for that matter, but that wasn't what they'd been looking for this time.

When they reached the test that forced them to demonstrate a henge, Mizuki reached out and wrapped a henge around Iruka. It was quite possibly one of the creepiest moments of his life. He could feel the touch of the other man's chakra down to his very soul, as if Mizuki was peering into the depths of his being.

He never wanted to feel so exposed again.

OOOOOOOOO

Iruka's knees were weak as he left the Hokage's office. The teaching job. They had offered him the job. Him! He would actually be useful again.

What was the old adage? Those who can't do, teach? Well, Iruka intended to make good on that saying.

He reached his apartment door with no memory of the journey there. He almost immediately knelt before the small shrine for his parents and explained to them the position he'd been offered. He was bubbling in a way that he hadn't in years, and while he didn't quite grin, the sad, close-lipped smile that had been his only expression of happiness had lost it's hard edge of unhappiness.

A noise at the door interrupted him, and he pulled it open to see Mizuki with what looked like a consoling look on his face. He couldn't hold it in. "I got it!"

The look of shock took him by surprise. "What?"

"I got it! How about you - you must have, I mean, if they took me, they would have been foolish not to take everyone." He was babbling.

A lightening fast rabbit punch to the end of his nose halted the words instantly. And made stars exploded behind his eyes, his brain feel like it was threatening to burst from his skull, and his cheekbones begin aching in an interesting rhythm. He stumbled backwards, gapping up at his friend.

"Fuck you. If you weren't the Sandaime's pet, he would have tossed you out long ago. But he wants you to be a shinobi even if you couldn't ninja yourself out of a paper bag. So he gives you this fucking cake job so you can be safe. And passes me over. You can both just go to hell."

The whole wall rattled as he wrenched the door shut.

Iruka ignored both the trickle of blood on his upper lip and the water welling in the corners of his eyes that, he told himself firmly, only had to do with the physical shock of the strike.

Mizuki was pacing outside his front door the next morning and pleaded to be forgiven. Iruka hesitantly accepted it - he could rationally understand why Mizuki was so upset. But the other man was awarded a teaching position at the next test, and the incident was all but forgotten.

Except for the slight distance Iruka began to place between himself and his friend.

OOOOOOOOO

Every inch of him ached. Producing a convincing henge required a conscious effort to wrap your skin in a thin coating of chakra. He described it to the kids as allowing your chakra to ooze out of your pores – a prospect that was easy for children with practically unlimited chakra reserves, but that was less than easy for someone with greatly limited chakra and a useless arm.

The reality of his arm, shoulder and a large portion of the left side of his chest forced Iruka to create a sheath of chakra extended from the last, still-working node all the way to his fingertips. The effort to maintain an extended sheet of chakra just above his skin was exhausting.

He'd discovered today that, if he pushed himself to the breaking point, his body would automatically retract all of his chakra as fast as possible and through the closest available node. He'd also discovered the reason why children were taught to have iron control over their chakra from a very early age and were never encouraged to find their limits.

Instantaneous retraction hurt.

A lot.

He sunk below the level of the water and let the heat permeate sore muscles and aching bones. His henge was far from perfect, and the reaction today almost convinced him to give up.

If only he wasn't so completely set against giving up, his life would be a lot easier and a great deal less painful.

OOOOOOOOO

The clone left a lot to be desired, and Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from yelling. "Fail!" Alright, so he hadn't quite managed to resist the urge to shout. But there were some skills so basic that no genin should be without them.

The henge was one, but the boy in front of him had mastered that one enough to completely pervert it.

Clones were another, and clones were one of the many jutsu's that Iruka had not managed to relearn. He was actually surprised that Naruto hadn't called him out on it since he had never demonstrated a clone for his class.

When Mizuki leaned in and tried to convince him to let the boy pass, Iruka waived him off. Mizuki, of all people, should understand his reluctance to put Naruto in a higher rank without first vetting his skills.

But the sad, dark look the boy gave him cut straight to the bone, and as he weaved through the crowd of congratulatory parents and celebrating kids, his path was vaguely aimed at the lonely figure sitting sideways on the swing. He really should explain his reasoning to Naruto. The boy had tried to pass several times after all, and he just wanted him to understand that Iruka was doing it for his own good.

They'd head to Ichiraku, he decided as he slipped between one of Mizuki's students and her parents. Ramen always cheered him up. But a surprisingly strong hand that belied the owner's age closed on his elbow and drew him off before he got the chance.

OOOOOOOOO

"Naruto…." Iruka felt a chill hand grip his heart. He knew he should have sought the boy out after the conversation with the Sandaime. He'd been worried that Naruto would do something truly stupid, but had not expected this. Nor had he expected the strange conversation when he'd located him. "Where did you get that scroll on your back?"

"Mizuki-sensei told me about it."

_Mizuki_. His weak chakra pinged at the very last minute, sending panicked sparks through his nervous system. One hand shot out without a second thought, shoving Naruto out of the kunai's path. The only other thing he could do was throw up both arms and hope that the weapons didn't hit anything vital.

A smirk crept across Mizuki's face as studied the injuries.

Iruka's blood froze in his veins as he saw the darkness Mizuki had hidden for years - the side that roiled up just below the surface on occasion and lasted long enough to make him uneasy around his childhood friend, but not enough to scare him this much.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Mizuki went from comrade to enemy. As he began the wind-up to skewer the kyuubi boy, Iruka made a choice. Mizuki knew that Iruka could not stop him.

But Mizuki always put himself before anyone else. The choice that Iruka made was one that Mizuki would never have considered.

The choice to protect, even at the cost of his own life. It was all he could do.

He could feel Mizuki's anger explode behind him. It took every ounce of strength to rip the shuriken from his back, and reservoirs beyond that to bring himself upright. He intended to stop the other chuunin, but his body refused to cooperate.

Mizuki was going to kill Naruto, and the only weapon he had left was surprise. He couldn't out-fight Mizuki, but he'd already stalled the other man simply by doing something unexpected.

He hadn't told anyone about the jutsu's he'd re-mastered between his selection as a teacher and the present.

He managed to hold the henge even when his legs gave out, and let out a little snicker as Mizuki's face twisted in rage. _That's right. I beat you._

But he'd played his last card, and Mizuki had known him for long enough – knew more about him and his limitations than any other person – and he _knew _that Iruka was only still upright thanks to the tree at his back. He even felt safe enough to hold a conversation that would, in the end, mean his doom.

As Mizuki freed a shuriken and aimed it at him, Iruka fought to still the trembling of his limbs. They shook from sheer exhaustion – he hadn't expended this large a percentage of chakra since his first injury – so when the other man stepped forward into a striking position, he smiled slightly, resigned. He'd been on borrowed time after an injury that should have killed him. He'd been allowed to continue in the job he loved even though he could barely qualify for it.

His mother had died protecting him, and there were certainly worse ways to go than by carrying on her legacy.

Besides, Mizuki was the only friend he had. What was he going to do without him?

Naruto's appearance broke his train of thoughts, and he screamed at the boy, barely conscious of what he was saying. He'd given so much to try and keep Naruto safe, and now the idiot was…

The whole thing was unbelievable, and yet he was sure he hadn't slipped into some hallucination. Naruto jumped on him after he'd tied his hitae-ate around the boys forehead and the invitation for free ramen, and Iruka hissed under his breath, trying to channel the miniscule amount of chakra he had left to stem the bleeding from the severe wound in his back and choosing to ignore the shallower kunai wounds on the rest of his body. But even with that, when Naruto let him go, he felt his vision darken and his body slump forward.

The last thing he heard before passing out was Naruto's frantic, "Oi, sensei! Iruka-sensei!" He felt hands grab at his shoulders and shake him, and he tried to find his voice to give the boy a stern lecture about how to treat injured comrades, but the impulse never reached his vocal cords.

OOOOOOOOO

He awoke to the familiar sounds and scents of the hospital, but didn't open his eyes. Facing his surroundings meant dealing with the fact that for the first time in years, he was truly alone. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall.

He was sure that he'd known deep down that Mizuki was a bad seed, but he would never have expected... A particularly deep breath tugged at the open wound along his back, and he dug his fingers into the mattress to ride out the spike of pain. He would never have expected the other man to fall so far.

And even so…

He did not know if he could handle being alone.

But he was going to have to try.

He opened his eyes and sat up slowly. A chair was pulled over to his bedside, and Izumo was slumped over the foot of his bed. Kotetsu was passed out on the couch along the wall. He opened his mouth, but couldn't find the right words to say.

Izumo raised his head sleepily, caught his stricken gaze, and said. "Oh, good, you're up. We were getting worried."

Iruka wasn't sure what he'd expected, only that those words were not it. He'd thought they would make demands. Even a genin would have been able to save Naruto and avoid being hit themselves. He'd never explained the seal and his limitations to them, not wanting them to worry about him. In the back of his mind, he had always sort of assumed they would be furious over that omission.

Kotetsu struggled from the over-stuffed cushions. "We're really sorry, Ru. That we haven't been there for you."

A strangled sob escaped his lips, and he collapsed against Izumo's shoulder, clinging to his former teammate as he cried. He couldn't remember the last time he'd given into his emotions - probably that day as far back as the Sandaime's office when he first found out about his demotion. Back when he'd first reconnected with Mizuki...

The tears strengthened. Kotetsu reached over the bed and stroked his hair out of his face. "He's getting snot all over you." He said in a casually conversational tone to Izumo.

Iruka snorted, chuckling between the sobs, and slowly the gale passed, and he was able to sit upright again, wincing as stitches pulled in the motion, and wiped his face and nose on the back of his arm.

"What are you, an animal?" Izumo grabbed a box of Kleenex from the bedside table and shoved it at him. Iruka looked sheepish, grabbed the tissue and blew his nose.

"Sorry." He sobered "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I...I just..."

Both men fixed him with serious gazes. He couldn't satisfactorily explain why he'd kept it from them, and they probably wouldn't ever understand. Izumo stretched out a hand and rested it on his blanket-covered knee. "Why don't you tell us now?"

They'd listened wide-eyed to the entire story, which started at the hospital in Mist and ended at the hospital here in Konoha.

"Fucking bastard." Kotetsu snarled out when Iruka was done explaining the fight in the forest with Mizuki, and Izumo bobbed his head in agreement.

"Your chakra is really sealed, Ru?" Izumo sat forward on the chair as Iruka pulled the neck of the hospital gown aside to reveal the seal that had burned out brightly against his skin ever since he'd depleted his chakra so much. The hospital staff assured him that it would become invisible again as soon as he wasn't in such dire straights.

"Not all of it. But most of it…" He pulled the fabric back up to hide the seal.

"And you made chuunin? That's freaking awesome!"

"Seriously! What kind of techniques do you use?"

"Guys…I didn't do it on my own. If Mizuki hadn't been there, I wouldn't have been able to…" He trailed off at the murderous look plastered on Izumo's face. His former teammate opened his mouth to rebuke him but was stopped by Kotetsu's upheld hand.

Said hand went from stopping Izumo to smacking him upside the back of the head. "If you ever say something that stupid again, we'll have to hurt you."

"But, it's true…" The sound of hand meeting skull interrupted him.

"Did you or did you not just beat him?" Izumo queried. Kotetsu was thankfully standing behind Iruka, so the injured chuunin missed him rolling his eyes in frustration.

"Beat" Iruka stammered. "Beat him? He almost killed me! If Naruto hadn't been there, he would have. And I-I put him in danger. If I had just passed him in the first place, Mizuki would never have been able to manipulate him like that."

Two hands dealt the blows this time, and Kotetsu actually grabbed his shoulders and gave him a single hard shake that made his head feel like it was about to fall off. "Mizuki's fucked up ideas and plans to control other people are in no way your fault!" The words were snarled out in pure fury. "The _only_ person who should and will take blame for what happened out there is that sodding asshole who hurt you!"

"Whether or not you'd passed Naruto, he would have found some way to get what he wanted." Izumo chimed in. "Besides, there's not a single other teacher who would have done what you did for him. No one else would have thought about passing him or even considered feeling bad about failing him."

A memory swam to the surface from when he'd been knocked out with painkillers after he'd been bandaged up. The Sandaime was standing over him and resting a gentle hand on an uninjured stretch of skin high on his shoulder. He'd spoken for a while, but Iruka could only remember a couple of sentences. "You changed his life last night, Iruka. I hope you realize that."

"What am I going to do now…?" Iruka asked his clenched hands.

"Isn't the next Academy class starting tomorrow?"

"I-I…"

"You're really going to let those hooligans be alone in your classroom? Che. We'll be lucky if the entire building isn't a smoking crater by ten a.m."

"I'm glad we have gate duty." Izumo turned his back on Iruka, effectively excluding him from the conversation. "At least we'll be far enough away to be safe."

"But…" Iruka spluttered.

"The view won't be very good, though." Kotetsu rubbed his chin. "The top of the apartment building looks out over it."

"But then we wouldn't be doing our job. We might be able to park ourselves on the top of the wall, that way we can kill two birds with one stone." Both men considered it for a moment.

"There's a problem with this, though, you know."

"Mmm."

"We're going to wind up being assigned to help clean-up and rebuild."

"Yup."

"Probably three months of shoveling soot and debris. Another two months of reconstruction."

"Oh, and then there's the interior decorating. Knowing our luck, we'll probably wind up laying the floorboards and lugging in the blackboards."

"Ugh. I hate putting in flooring."

Two pairs of pleading eyes pinned him as he was suddenly added back into the conversation.

After a moment of silence, Iruka flung his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright. I'll go back to teaching, if it means that much to you."

"Aw, really? Thanks, Ru!" Izumo's simpering smile didn't even falter under his glare.

"You're both manipulative jerks, you know that?" Iruka muttered darkly.

"Well, yeah." Izumo flopped down on the end of his bed and stretched out to steal the suspicious looking hospital food that had been sitting on his bedside table since he woke up. "This shouldn't be news to you."

The difference was that these two were not-so-subtly forcing him to make the right decision, so that, when he looked back on this portion of his life, he didn't regret the choices he had made.

The next day found him sitting behind his desk, reading off a roll call.

Save for the bandages that covered most of his torso and wrapped all the way up around his neck, it could have been any ordinary day.

OOOOOOOOO

The soft light from the bedside lamp barely illuminated the room. Heavy shadows stretched from all the corners and licked at the edges of the tangled sheets. The man sprawled across the bed had been tossing in his sleep again, and most of the blankets were shoved to the end or off the bed. He lay on his stomach, one leg crooked up to turn him slightly towards his side, and arms crossed under his pillow. The remaining sheet was twisted tightly around his waist.

Long experience told him that the other man rarely tossed like this. In fact, the last time his bed partner's sleep had been this fitful was when he'd come home bleeding from a dozen different wounds that all seemed superficial, but had turned out to be infected with a slow-acting poison. They hadn't realized until his tongue had swollen enough to close his mouth. After a sleepless night at the hospital, his touchstone hadn't rested peacefully for almost a week.

This time, like many of the others, he felt completely responsible. He hadn't realized, hadn't remembered enough of the story to figure out how bad the retelling would affect the other man. Iruka had spoken to his hands, which remained clenched in his lap, and his voice had cracked once or twice. He described actions and instances only and left out any information about his own emotions, but Kakashi could hear the tension in the words and was able to fill in enough information to understand the mind-fucks Iruka had been through. The chuunin had retreated to bed the minute he'd finished and had fallen into a fitful sleep.

From the way Iruka was sleeping, he couldn't see the scar that marked his chest and had so drastically reduced his abilities as a shinobi. What he could see was the pale ridge of puckered skin running from right shoulder to left hip. The scar stood out in stark contrast against the honeyed skin, particularly in the weak light, as a silent testament to Iruka's unquestionable ability to protect.

The bed dipped as he settled on the edge and stroked a finger along edge of the mark. This was not the first time he'd seen or even touched the marred skin that crossed his touchstone's back, but he had always assumed that it was a battle scar earned from a particularly nasty mission.

The knowledge that a comrade had inflicted the deep wound… Kakashi rested his forehead on Iruka's back, grateful to feel the rhythmic rise and fall of the other's breath.

A few months ago, after Iruka had stumbled over the mention of Mizuki's name when Kakashi'd asked about his genin team, he'd gone to the one person he knew he could get an answer from.

Well, two people to be exact.

The lazy stances changed instantly at the mention of the other chuunin's name. "Let's just say that, if we'd found Mizuki that night he attacked Ru and Naruto, there wouldn't have been enough left of him for anyone to identify."

"If there was anything left at all." Izumo added in a malevolent tone of voice that Kakashi had never heard before.

Only now did he understand their reaction, and he carded his fingers through the loose hair as Iruka shifted and muttered in his sleep.

Only now did he understand Iruka's overreaction at the chuunin exam, and he kicked himself for being such an asshole.

"_Are you trying to crush these kids?"_

Iruka's shout echoed around the back of his skull. The other man had been terrified that the kids were being pushed into testing far too early. The possibility that something similar might happen had scared him to death, but Kakashi had brushed him off and made a dark joke about adding a little pain to their lives to help them grow up.

In retrospect, his own words made him feel sick. He'd assumed, naively, that the chuunin who had been an academy teacher for the majority of his career as a shinobi, had never experienced true pain.

Oh, how wrong he'd been.

For a very long time, him simply perched on the edge of the bed, stroking the thick, soft locks and willing the apology to break past his lips. He was a fair bit out of practice for saying those words considering how often he whispered that phrase in front of memorial stone.

"I'm sorry." The voice was not his own, and it took him a moment to realize that Iruka had spoken, his words muffled in the pillow and shaking slightly. "I should have told you, before…" He turned his face deeper into the bed. "You've put your life in my hands, and you had a right to know that I..I can't do anything. If you were ever really hurt…I…I…" The end of the sentence broke off in what sounded distinctly like a sob.

Kakashi sat back. His short contemplation about the best course of action ended as his hand landed on the thick, overstuffed pillow that took up a large portion of his side of the bed.

"Gyahh!" Iruka rolled as he was buffeted by two quick blows. Kakashi knelt on the bed above him and brandished his pillow. "What are you do…mmmph." The next blow caught him full in the face, and he slid off the edge of the bed with a startled yelp as his legs stuck in the sheets. "You…you, bastard!"

Said bastard spread his hands innocently, happily ignoring the offending pillow still in his grasp.

Iruka let out a war cry, made a flying leap onto the bed, and snatched his own pillow up as he passed. The headboard clacked against the wall as he stumbled on the pile of sheets. Kakashi dove for him, wrapping an arm around his waist, and tumbling them both to the mattress. As they fell, Iruka wrapped a leg around his knee and twisted them so that he landed straddling the jounin. He reared back and swung almost blindly at the upper-ranking shinobi, knowing full-well that he didn't stand a chance of hitting the other man.

Kakashi let him get in a couple of hits before flipping their position.

"Argh, you…! Lemme go!" Iruka squirmed under him in an attempt to free his hands. "You jerk. What did you hit me for?"

"How many times have I shown up bleeding on your doorstep?"

"I lost count when I ran out of fingers."

"And how many times have I died?"

"What? None, idiot. Why are you…?" Confusion was plastered all over Iruka's face.

"Then why do you think you have anything to apologize for?" He kissed a line along the scar crossing Iruka's nose, grinning when he heard the uncontrollable giggle start building in Iruka's chest. Who'd have thought the rough skin would be one of the most ticklish parts of his touchstone's body? He'd discovered it almost a half a year ago now, and had no qualms over massively exploiting it.

Despite his best efforts to resist, the laughter exploded past Iruka's lips, and he shoved at Kakashi's shoulders as the older man nuzzled his face. "Stop it!" He gasped between gales of laughter.

Kakashi finally gave in to the pleas and sat back. "That's better. It's much more pleasant when you're smiling." For a moment, they lay in silence that was broken only by Iruka swinging his pillow into the side of Kakashi's head.

The jounin fell backward and clutched at his head in mock pain.

"That's for hitting me before." Iruka aimed the pillow at him.

"Ah. That method came on high recommendation from your good friends. They said that sometimes you needed sense beaten into you and suggested a smack upside the head."

"Well, thanks for softening the blow." He yelped in surprise as Kakashi tackled him back onto the bed and yanked the sheets over them. "What're you…?"

"It's late." Kakashi murmured into his ear as he nestled down against Iruka's side, one hand reaching back to turn off the light.

The room plunged into darkness, but Iruka's breathing didn't even out, and Kakashi waited for him to speak.

"What would you have done if you'd known from the beginning?"

"Nothing different." Kakashi pulled him tighter against his chest. "Shit happens, Iruka. 'S a fact of life, but what this scar shows," He punctuated the statement with a gentle stroke down the scar that crossed Iruka's back. "Is that you're willing to protect the people you care about. Sounds like the kind of person I would be lucky to have as a touchstone. You're not as useless as you think you are." A pregnant pause broke the thoughts. "I need you."

It had been a long night, and the act of recounting his past had brought back all the doubts and fears seeded by Mizuki's exploitation and left to run rampant in Iruka's subconscious. Kotetsu and Izumo had helped hold him together through the worst times after Mizuki's betrayal, but he had relied on them.

This was the first time since his original injury that someone else had relied on him.

The body in his arms trembled slightly, and he reached out to wipe tears from Iruka's face.

OOOOOOOOO

Pein loomed over the crouched figure at the end of the street. One of Kakashi's dogs was screaming for help along the link between them, and as he leapt to the next storey of the building, the Konoha shinobi came into view, and his heart skipped a beat.

_Iruka._

A bright flash caught his eye as a long and narrow blade appeared in Pein's hand. His arm swung forward in an arc, aiming for Iruka's throat. The chuunin raised his head in defiance, but didn't move an inch beyond that.

Because there was absolutely nothing Iruka could do to stop the blow, and Kakashi was all too painfully aware of that.

All he could do was pray that he made it in time and whisper a silent thanks that Iruka had informed him of his limitations, otherwise he wasn't sure he would have acted soon enough to save the man, believing that the chuunin would be fast enough to dodge.

Anyone watching from the outside might think his actions overzealous, but Kakashi wasn't going to take any chances.

OOOOOOOOO

Fin.

Sorry for the wait (ah, I sound like a broken record...)

Broken was an attempt to explain why Iruka is the way he is. I rather feel like I didn't manage to capture what I was going for...but...eh

Hopefully it was all enjoyable - let me know!

P.S. Has anyone else noticed my writing changing? Seems like it's gotten really crappy recently, and I've got a writer's block a mile wide. *sigh*


End file.
